PNY GeForce 8500GT 512MB Review

Introduction:

Up for review this time around will be PNY's GeForce 8 Series graphics card, the 8500GT 512MB PCIe. This graphics card is new to the PNY GeForce 8 series line up and is ranked by PNY second from the bottom out of 10 GeForce 8 cards. PNY has defined its GeForce 8 Series graphics cards as designed in mind for the performance enthusiast. So, with that in mind, when the 8500GT was pulled from its packaging, the card itself was not unique and looked pretty plain. Expectations were more.

PNY Technologies is an American computer hardware company that was established in 1985 and is headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey. PNY maintains offices and manufacturing facilities in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Taiwan. Aside from PNY's Nvidia Graphics Cards lineup, PNY also manufactures USB flash drives, memory upgrades, flash memory cards, and the Vibe MP3 player.

Finally, the 8500GT 512MB PCIe can be bought from PNY's webstore for $149.99. Now, let's see if this thing was actually designed for the performance enthusiast or for Grandma and Grandpa playing online checkers.

Closer Look:

Right off the bat, my first impressions were low with the outside packaging. Now, I've said earlier that one should never judge a book by its cover; that's still true. However, that doesn't change the fact this box is awful. The box graphics are not eye catching and what was most irritating was the size of the box; it's tiny. Is there actually a performance enthusiast graphics card inside that or what?

As you can see, the box is mainly black and green, which are NVIDIA's colors. There is a small band through the middle of the front cover, showing the eyes of some alien or robot. On the backside, it sets out all the features that one can expect. However, the consumer does not get to see what the graphics card looks like. The box is small, which led me to believe that the inside protection was just as inadequate, and was I right. All the contents came inside a small plastic container which was sealed in thin film plastic. The card was not sufficiently protected.

From these photos, you can see for yourself. Look at that lovely graphics card. Notice no anti-static wrap? Yikes, what's up with that? Aside from that, the next photo shows what's included:

As you can see, nothing special about this graphics card.

The PNY 8500GT 512MB PCIe utilizes a PCI Express slot. It has one DVI output, one VGA output, and one S-video connection. It is small so you will only have to open the one expansion slot for the PCI-E slot in case you haven't done so. The PNY 8500GT 512MB PCIe also requires a minimum 300W power supply. However, no external power source is required.

Now, you should have a pretty good feel as to what the PNY 8500GT 512MB PCIe looks like, so let's install it.